We pushed back our shallop,
and resumed our station on the cliff beside the old mariner and his
descendant.
"Wherefore sought ye to peril your own lives fruitlessly," said Mark,
"in attempting to save the doomed? Whoso touches those infernal ships,
never survives to tell the tale. Woe to the man who is found nigh them
at midnight when the tide has subsided, and they arise in their former
beauty, with forecastle, and deck, and sail, and pennon, and shroud!
Then is seen the streaming of lights along the water from their cabin
windows, and then is heard the sound of mirth and the clamor of tongues,
and the infernal whoop and halloo, and song, ringing far and wide. Woe
to the man who comes nigh them!"
To all this my Allanbay companion listened with a breathless attention.
I felt something touched with a superstition to which I partly believed
I had seen one victim offered up; and I inquired of the old mariner,
"How and when came these haunted ships there? To me they seem but the
melancholy relics of some unhappy voyagers, and much more likely to
warn people to shun destruction, than entice and delude them to it.
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